‘Blade Runner 2049’ Will Be Rated R Like the Original Film

As they often do when a much-beloved film property gets revived after decades spent dormant, fans have had plenty of cause to fret while Blade Runner 2049has neared its release. Will there be a voiceover? (No.) Will the film definitively answer the question of whether Deckard is a replicant? (Also no.) Will the soundtrack rule? (It certainly seems that way.) And yet so many questions still remain in advance of the film’s wide release. Today will resolve one big one, however, and assuage quite a few fan worries with it.

The Motion Picture Association of America recently released a new bulletin from the Classification and Rating Administration, specifying the official ratings on a handful of new releases, one of which happens to be Blade Runner 2049. And devotees of Ridley Scott’s original will be pleased to hear that Denis Villeneuve’s take will also merit an R, for what the CARA describes as “violence, some sexuality, nudity, and language.” It’s a bold move, to be certain; most studios work to keep a film of this scale PG-13, so that it’ll be more widely available and accordingly more likely to recoup its costs of production. But going with the R rating suggests a commitment to preserving the spirit of the original, which is always good news. For your edification, the official synopsis of the film:

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.